About the author

czabe

Steve Czaban is a 25 year sports radio veteran, who hosts an afternoon drive show in Washington D.C. "Czabe" also writes and edits his own commentaries for www.czabe.com and other on-line and print publications. He can be reached at czabe@yahoo.com.

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8 Comments

  1. 1

    Josh

    Be all that as it may, it is still boring as hell to watch.

    I think that American sports do reflect our country’s intensely legalistic soul – a country founded by lawyers is of course going to have games with complex rules and minute attention to all detail. Commercials are pretty annoying but I would really hate to have our jerseys covered in adverts… think of NASCAR; their cars are covered in adverts as are the drivers ‘one-sies’ (do they come with attached footies?) and there are still commercial breaks. Commercials are in American sports because of how television is run and paid for, not because there are designated clock-stoppages in the games that are televised. Europe just does their TV differently and regular TV shows tend to have the commercials clustered at the very start/end of shows (at least that is my understanding). Depending on the sport coaches probably are overglorified – in baseball, yes very much so, in football much less so. I think that an NFL head coach probably works harder and longer than any individual player and is probably more influential on wins/losses than any single player other than the QB. You don’t see any criticism of coaches in any sport because they all tend to be very closed ‘old boys’ networks. Company town and all that.

    Cheers,
    J

    Reply
    1. 1.1

      SiPhi

      From what I’ve seen of Nascar they don’t have commercial breaks, but a PiP type of display where the race is still being shown. Granted I haven’t watched a second of a race in 4 years or so. I think that tv timeouts taken out of the NFL would be fantastic. Games would probably end in 2.5 to 3 hours. That way the NFL could fit in 3 games every sunday. Your move Goodell, your move.

      Reply
  2. 2

    Dr. Vandal Savage

    The only thing I don’t get is why is it that soccer boosters have to take shots at the other sports in order to boost it? Make the case without bashing another sport. Czabe makes some interesting points, but I can’t see “running time” working in football or basketball.

    Time outs are an integral part of the strategy and their use separates the great coaches from the not so great. Take away time outs and fake injuries would become an epidemic at the end of games. A football team could run out the clock with 10 minutes left.

    Reply
  3. 3

    HozelRockit

    I don’t have anything against soccer but it never really caught on with me. That said, current American sports could learn a lot from how the game is presented.

    Reply
  4. 4

    john

    Sorry but baseball is horrendously slow. I know that a soccer game starts at a certain time and will end in 90 minutes whereas in baseball you never know when it’s going to end AND games always last at least 3 hours! Who has time for that! I will always prefer a “low scoring” soccer game than any 3.5 hour baseball game.

    Reply
  5. 5

    Tom

    Don’t want to be “that guy”, but he’s not holding up a clock. He’s holding up a substitution board. #20 is coming out and #14 is going in. Just saying.

    Reply
  6. 6

    Droolcup

    I don’t want to get into the political aspects I’m just talking face value here. At the beginning of Annie Hall Woody Allen tells a joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”

    That’s soccer. Sure it might be vastly corrupt and the games mind numbingly boring, but hey it’s short!

    Reply
  7. 7

    soccer tipsters

    I think.I don’t have anything against soccer but it never really caught on with me. That said, current American sports could learn a lot from how the game is presented.

    Reply

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